Understanding Cleavages

(Levels of Analysis in Political Science in

Relation to the Socio-Political Reality)

by
Mykoliuk Oleksandra

Comparison of Modern Democracies

Metropolitan University Prague

2019
 The way in which cleavages are addressed, when being brought up, is linked to two different
levels of analysis in political science. The first one is related to a methodological dimension of the
analysis: simplification, in order to better understand. The second level of analysis is related to the
difficulties our theoretical models encounter when they must recompose the reality to which they
refer, with the risk of ordering it according to our own logic, which we suppose to be the real logic
of socio-political facts. This paper aims to briefly analyze the two levels of analysis with a focus
on the Left-Right cleavage to further exemplify and explain them.

1. The cleavage as a method of simplifying social reality

A cleavage, as a rule, refers to dividing the political and social world into two, three, n
categories. From this perspective, we can rightly accept the idea that binary or triple typologies
are a response to a tendency of our mind to simplify things in order to understand them.

a. The binary typologies used in the analysis of political cleavages create the social category and
its opposite: rural-urban, left-right, center-periphery etc. The need for simplified thinking is far
from overcome in the case of multiple political discrepancies. The argument is simple: instead of
a binary right-left typology, we introduce two, three, four binary typologies: center-periphery,
rural-urban, national-international etc. In other words, instead of simplifying binary on a single
line, we binary simplify on multiple levels.

b. The second problem that the analysis of policy and political behavior through cleavages surfaces
is related to the connections between the typologies built in our mind for simplification, for the
purpose of understanding, and the way in which the socio-political reality we are trying to explain
presents itself. This second hypothetical trick raised by the cleavage analysis refers to the refusal
of the socio-political reality to obey the analytical categories that we create. Having in mind these
theoretical traps, we will continue to present the fundamental categories derived from political
science for the analysis of reality from the point of view of its simple layout, built on logic and the
principle of non-contradiction. A principle that, as we shall see, only partially helps us in analyzing
socio-political phenomena.

2. The characteristics of political cleavages

Western political analysis identifies a number of defining features for the need to operate with
the term cleavage in political science.

2.1. From this perspective, a political cleavage refers to a social division that allows the
separation of the population and the identification of categories of participants in the
political act, depending on one or other of the fundamental characteristics of a social
group - profession, social status, religion, ethnicity, and so on. By appealing to these
characteristics we will be able to identify different political cleavages: Protestant-
 Catholics, employers-workers, minority ethnicity-majority, rural-urban, center-periphery,
left-right, etc.

2.2. The second characteristic defining the term of political cleavage is the group
consciousness of these separate communities. Such consciousness of belonging to the
group is directly related to one of the collective identities the individual assumes by
participating in political activities within the natural or artificial community to which he
belongs.

2.3. A social cleavage with political valences must be expressed in organizational terms. The
community that defines itself by different key elements needs institutional structures to
assume the participation and organization of the members and groups that make up the
respective social division. These are institutions such as the church, trade unions, parties
and political organizations, other civil society institutions.

As noted by M. Gallagher, M. Laver, and P. Mair in the Representative Government in Western

Europe (1992, pp. 90-91), each of these three characteristics of social cleavages of political value
must be taken into account in political analysis he could account for their training, their weight
and their erosion. The dynamics of these social cleavages with political significance is sometimes
linked to the dynamics of the occupation of the labor force, to the dynamics of the idea of collective
awareness or to the organizational structure of the society.

A fundamental trait that we will observe at political discrepancies is that they are based either
explicitly or implicitly on a duality that refers to space. Can we draw the conclusion that our mind
has a spatial mood of categories to better understand? For example, the center-periphery, rural-
urban cleavage makes explicit reference to the spatial arrangement, which, moreover, it is based
on. The right-left case has no explicit link to the spatial layout, as it is nowadays operationalized.
In fact, however, at origin, he went as a term that explicitly referred to spatial layout. What was
this space layout referring to?

3. The Left- Right cleavage

As many other concepts of political science (revolution, ideology, etc.), the Right-Left cleavage
began its career as a metaphor, rather than a concept of political science. The accident, which
represented the beginning of the historical career of the conceptual duo, concerned the creation of
the Constituent Assembly on the left and the right of the assembly president at the time of the
French Revolution.

Their accreditation as fundamental temptations in political analysis is due, says Norberto Bobbio,
to a certain definition of politics - an activity based on a conflictual relationship:

"The parties in the game are always two, no matter how many allies they have.”
 Keeping the great and the only friend-enemy dichotomy inescapable, it has been reduced
inevitably to just two conflicting parties, as in the bipolarity process that became obligatory by
attracting various potential adversaries to the existing poles, is based on the principle and practice
that the friend of my enemy is my enemy or, conversely, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Because there are only two possible positions, or a friend, or an enemy - a counter position that
fully explains the dualistic vision of politics - where the parties at the beginning are more than two,
four possible combinations are outlined: a friend can whether it be the friend of the friend, or the
enemy of the enemy; Your enemy will be both the enemy of your friend and the friend of the
enemy. Certain coalitions or alliances that seem unnatural in international relations or party
relations are in fact the natural consequence of the dichotomy logic. In human relationships, the
most striking example of antithesis is war; but the logic of the dichotomy is not alien to the
traditional religious or metaphysical vision of the world of nature (light-darkness, chaos-order,
limit, God-devil).1

Accepting political dualism structured on this need for the dichotomy of our mind, Bobbio
tries to demonize that the type of right-left cleavage still has a real value in political analysis.
Contested by a number of contemporary political analysts, this cleavage supported by the Italian
author explicitly claiming to have a left-wing vision seeks to explain political reality by appealing
to certain kinds of values that group both political parties and op- tions the political attitudes in
two major catagories that differ according to their position on the crest have to do with tradition,
political values such as freedom, equality, statelessness, state and the role of the state, etc. From
this perspective, we will have to proceed to an explicit definition of the content of the two
analytical categories that aim to explain the politics and behavior of political agents or voters.

3.1. Left - category of political science

When we say that a political party or ideology, attitude or discourse is "on the left", the first
association that we have inexplicitly in our minds is socialism. It is true that originally, the term
left included ideology or socialist attitude in politics. At the extreme, the left was associated with
"red" - the identification of party or political-ideological option with socialism being still more
precise in this formula. In reality, however, the left values have become much more complex than
those associated with reformers, or policy changers, defined in the nineteenth century by
opposition to conservatives or traditionalists.

The emergence of political parties in the second half of the last century, the dissociation
between Marxism and anarchism, between socialism and social democracy, as well as the electoral
representation of social-demoralization in the Parliament, made the left values the principles of
action that could establish attitudes of Marxist, social-democratic, labourist, or even liberal
socialist parties. The traditional Whigs and Torries groups could also enter the right-left categories
through their attitude towards political change at different levels.

3.2. Criteria for defining the right-left axis

1
Norberto Bobbio, Right and Left, 1997, University of Chicago Press, p. 74
 In the debates on this conceptually anti-thetic duo we can use two fundamental principles that
appear systematically, whatever the perspective of approach: the principle of vertical organization
and the principle of horizontal organization of society. The horizontal dimension refers to the idea
of equality, while the vertical one refers to the idea of hierarchy. Revelli proposes in Right and
Left. Lost Identity (2007) five Left-Right Differentiation Criteria:

1. the temporal criterion - progress-conservation

2. spatial criterion - equality-inequality

3. the person's criterion - self-direction-heterodirection

4. the function criterion - lower classes - upper classes

5. the criterion of knowledge - rationalism-irrationality. 2

The Italian author will establish the first and second role within these criteria, opting for
the decisive importance of the equality criterion, the only one able to reintroduce the analytical
categories of the right and the left.

3.3. Equality - Inequality

The left refers to the idea of equality between people. Equality between people is however
thought differently from ideologies, doctrines, political theories, depending on the degree to which
people can be said to be equal: they must be treated as equal in all respects, or equality between
men must be limited to rights and duties established by law?

The founding idea of the two theoretical constructs necessarily sends to subjects who become
part of a process of distribution and redistribution of resources. The Right and Left are self-defining
in this sense by determining who, how, when, when receiving from a distribution and redistribution
of social resources (rights, advantages, privileges, economic facilities, etc.).

From this perspective, we can have an extreme left, whose ideology is egalitarian: all people
are equal and therefore all must receive the same amount of goods from society, regardless of the
type of work and what they can offer to society. From this extreme defined by the "all are the
same" principle, a left-handed identity can be built up, in which grading criteria, such as merit,
effort, yield, etc. may appear. Combinations, Bobbio, are countless: in schools, merit is the basis
for equality, in social protection is added the criterion of minimal, or "decent" needs. The variations
could go down.

The basic idea is that the left represents several types of ideologies, doctrines or political
attitudes built on the instrumental criterion of equality. When we say that the left is egalitarian, it
does not mean that equality refers to anything, everything and everything. Left-hand equality is
defined by the appeal to other criteria that contextually relatives the instrumental principle of
equality. The Left refers to these conditions at parties, social movements that aim to reduce social
inequalities, without necessarily promoting equality in all conditions. Far from being reduced to
2
Revelli M., Right and Left. The lost identity, 2007, Bari: Laterza
the egalitarianism of the Marxist social-political philosophy, the left-wing equals the idea of
differences and inequalities of certain types. 3

3.4. The political right sends to the hierarchical organization

The right is defined by calling upon values that are contrary to those that support the analytical
class of the left. What we need to remember in defining this latter concept are the criteria that gave
the left to us. Abandonment of absolute criteria based on inequality between people and
differentiation is therefore necessary. An idea, a political doctrine or a party are right to the extent
that it attaches great importance to inequality, proposing merit and personal initiative as
fundamental criteria in the division between people. At rigor, the right refers to a definition of
society through the access to resources only on the criterion of its own capacities. The
redistribution of resources to the less endowed or the needy cannot be for the unequal right, built
almost exclusively on the merit criterion, rather than a theft of the productive ones. The hierarchy
that it introduces rightly, as an analytical category, is not ultimate. Inequality based on the content
of the right does not define either movements or ideologies, homogeneous attitudes at content
level, and the formulation of principles. The inequalities of the right refer to accepting the idea that
men are rather unequal than equal. Based on the idea of inequality, the "right" analytical category
does not reduce society to a world of force and in which it is unconditionally favored the best or
the strongest. For political right, inequalities are, in most cases, natural. They are also necessarily
manifested at the social level and must not or cannot be eliminated:
"The right is more willing to accept what is natural, but also what we call a second nature, that is,
the habit, the tradition, the power of the past. Left-hand artificiality does not fail to stand in the
face of obvious natural inequalities that cannot be attributed to society: let's just think about
releasing fools from the hospice. There is a step-step, but a step-by-step society. However, the left
has the tendency to believe that man can correct both. "4
A second criterion 5 used by Bobbio to clarify the content of the two concepts is related to
the way in which the issue of the relationship between freedom and authority is solved. Again,
however, we will have to introduce identification criteria: who participates in freedom, under what
conditions, after which criteria and who sets the criteria?

Freedom can be defined as an individual political value, while equality can only be defined
collectively: we can accept that there are political societies or regimes in which one is free but
there is no point in saying that there are societies in which only his or her despot the dictator is
equal. Equality therefore sends to a social relationship. Freedom, however, cannot function as
political value unless you take into account the freedoms of others. Having such a dual nature -
exclusively individual (freedom to think) and exclusively social - (the freedom to do something),
3
Bobbio follows an analytical line that introduces the debate on the natural, equal or unequal status of Rousseau
and Nietzsche. The fundamental idea the Italian author wants to demonstrate is that the extreme sentences and
their universality: "All men are equal" and "All men are unequal" are acceptable in the conditions in which we
define the meaning horizon: first, for example, it is true , because all humans are rational animals or are mortal
beings, and the second becomes true if we think that although they are equal in their belonging to the species and
by the mortal condition, they are unequal in the way they die in their individual skills which refer to inequalities
like intelligence, physical strength, etc.
4
idem, p. 114-115
5
Idem, p. 120-121
the action being always in an implicit or explored relationship with someone, we will define right-
hand by calling for the freedoms of to do something, and not to freedom in general: freedom of
opinion, to work, to do anything does not violate the freedom of others, negative freedom, positive
freedom, etc.
If, from this point of view of freedom, the two political concepts do not differ substantially,
in terms of authority, they enter into conflict when it comes to the intervention of state authority
in social-economic life.
The Left accepts, in a formula or other intervention of the state, the absolute planning of
communist radicalism and the abolition of private property by transforming it into state or
"common" property, "of the people", to the selective and limited state intervention, under
Parliament's strict control.
The extreme right rejects the idea of intervention, anarchism being an exemplary case for
this extreme, with the idea of the state being dissolved. Closer, or farther from this extreme, there
is a whole range of attitudes or right-wing political concepts. We have a minimal state liberalism,
the "bourgeois night watchman" state, procedural justice under the rule of law, etc.
The left can be defined in the same way if we take as an equalizing extreme point of view
the communist society that Marx sees based on the principle "From each one after the capacities,
to each according to needs." Contextually defined, the left accepts in the same way state
intervention, from the maximum to the contextual, minimal formula, equalizing living conditions
through social aid, to a limit that the governing body of a society regards as "decent".
The problem of using the right-left-hand axis is complicated when we notice that liberal
movements and authoritarian movements are in the same category of the right. Communist
(totalitarian) communist movements and movements or social-democratic parties are in the same
category as the left. Without denying that, at the level of practical consequences, the left and right
extremes reach. Like any extreme, anyway. Left and right totalitarianism differs from the ideology
that establishes them. At the practical level, they fail to respect the rights of the individual, even if
they want to make a new, better and more just man than any real individual from one epoch or
another.

As can be seen from the debate on the relations between the contents of the two analytical
categories of politics, understanding and operationalization is related to the possibility of accepting
them as relative concepts. Their content is not unitary in the sense of conservatism, traditionalism,
etc. Having no fixed content once and for all, the terms of the right and left are defined
contextually, depending on the age and political-ideological construction. The terms of
communist, Catholic, liberal are much clearer in content than the right or left. The right and left
concepts are therefore places of "political space", not intrinsic qualities of the political universe.
They represent "... a determined political topology, unrelated to political ontology, being relative
concepts used to simplify political explanation and analysis.” 6
The extreme right rejects the idea of intervention, anarchism being an exemplary case for
this extreme, with the idea of the state being dissolved. Closer, or farther from this extreme, there
is a whole range of attitudes or right-wing political concepts. We have a minimal state liberalism,
the "bourgeois night watchman" state, procedural justice under the rule of law, etc.
The left can be defined in the same way if we take as an equalizing extreme point of view
the communist society that Marx sees based on the principle "From each one after the capacities,
to each according to needs." Contextually defined, the left accepts in the same way state
6
Idem, p. 98
intervention, from the maximum to the contextual, minimal formula, equalizing living conditions
through social aid, to a limit that the governing body of a society regards as "decent".

The problem of using the right-left-hand axis is complicated when we notice that liberal
movements and authoritarian movements are in the same category of the right. Communist
(totalitarian) communist movements and movements or social-democratic parties are in the same
category as the left. Without denying that, at the level of practical consequences, the left and right
extremes reach. Like any extreme, anyway. Left and right totalitarianism differs from the ideology
that establishes them. At the practical level, they fail to respect the rights of the individual, even if
they want to make a new, better and more just man than any real individual from one epoch or
another.
We can therefore see that right and left can be defined at a very general level as analytical
categories that explain at least one dimension or part of politics. Their challenge as operational
analytical categories is related to their ability to explain and name concrete situations that can be
interpolated through this type of cleavage. What is the value of two concepts for Romanian politics,
for example? Are they a universal operational model?
Equality brings with it the idea of comfort, appreciation, evaluation, a situation that makes
it impossible for a major part of the electorate to vote for right policies, for example, where the
state withdraws from the economic activity that must become the prize of the private enterprise or
group. The idea of efficiency it would be to say, such a policy is directly linked to unemployment
and redimensioning, restructuring, situations that make it possible for employees to self-design in
an uncertain future. However, the state, as a majority or total owner, gives the impression of safety
in collective representations over the two institutions - private property and state property.
This is one of the serious reasons why the right-wing political parties have a very low
chance of facing a government or an electoral confrontation in a society educated in the spirit of
equality and the fact that someone - the state, in the present case, must give, in any circumstances.
These are just a few of the arguments that the right-left conceptual couple is extremely difficult to
operationalize on the contemporary reality. A changing society, which is made up of a majority
educated in the equality horizon, will make it impossible for a right-wing party to govern. Of
course, the right of an extreme traditionalist nationalism can bring votes from a certain electoral
segment. The party program will, however, necessarily contain left-wing values that send to social
equality.
General and local elections are today, as a rule, with left-wing propaganda. Independent of
their original intentions, political parties are forced to build on confused ideologies that include
left and right values equally. Hence the need they felt that they call themselves center-left or center-
right. Such an intermediate notion is the most obvious sign that right and left cannot become
operational analytical categories, as they themselves are, as we have said in a permanent evolution
and contextualization.

4. Conclusions

The problem of political analysis through political cleavages is that of the need to abandon
total simplification through the dual representation of social-political reality. True, dual thinking
is part of our way of simplifying to understand. The interplay between political cleavages and their
awareness provides the possibility of an interactive analysis that can better explain the voting
behavior and the interest of a political party or political organization when proposing development
programs. A political program may be left and agrarian, right and urban, left and urban, or right
and religious equally. The call to a single political cleavage for the analysis of electoral behavior
or the political behavior of different individual or collective agencies provides only limited and
insufficient explanations for the analysis of a determined political phenomenon. In fact, the appeal
to political cleavages in their hypothesis of interactive categories in political analysis is never done
on a single axis. The argument is simple: an individual cannot be defined just by appealing to one
of his social identities - a resident of the countryside, for example. As a resident of the country, he
belongs to several social groups at the same time: he is a Catholic or Orthodox, he is a farmer, a
teacher or an engineer, he is Hungarian or Armenian, etc. This multiple identity given to
individuals by their different groups of interests requires the multiplication of cleavages in political
analysis and a deeper understanding of the concept in general.
 Sources:

1. J. van Cleve, R.E Frederick, The Philosophy Of Right And Left: Incongruent Counterparts and
the Nature of Space, 2012, Springer Science & Business Media
2. Revelli M., Right and Left. The lost identity, 2007, Bari: Laterza
3. Norberto Bobbio, Right and Left, 1997, University of Chicago Press
4. Youtube: Crash Course Channel, Political Ideology series, ep. #35
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_k_k-bHigM )
5. Robert Rohrschneider, Stephen Whitefield, Understanding Cleavages in Party Systems: Issue
Position and Issue Salience in 13 Post-Communist Democracies, 2008